Killer whales

The only reason we went to Orcas island was to climb some dumb Mt. Constitution. We took a whole day out of our schedule to do it. It would be a good 2000 ft climb in just 4.5 miles.

We got up and left San Juan early to see the rest of the island before heading to Orcas. We stopped by a lighthouse that we timed just right to see some whales come by. Then we realized that the lighthouse was the same lighthouse in the cover of our handbook. We tried to copy the same pose and angle of the picture so we stood there for awhile taking dumb pictures.

We stopped by American Camp, not sure what it was. It had the nicest beach access on the island but we didn't explore much. We wanted to catch the ferry to Orcas island. We headed back to Friday Harbor.

We met some interesting people there. After hearing where we were headed they told us we were crazy because Orcas was really hilly. Then Mt. Constitution. Crazy.

I met this lady named Lee. She told me about many of the bike routes on the San Juans and gave me a free book that she wrote on bike riding. She told me to stay away from Orcas because there was nothing there but hills.

And hills there were. So many of them that it took us until 5 to get to the campsite. Then we ate a quick dinner to dump all of our bags off our bikes and started to climb Mt. Constitution.

It was tough. We thought when we took our bags off everything would be a lot easier. Not at all. We were struggling to get up to the route that starts the climb. Then we had another 5 miles to go! 2500 ft to go and we were hurting before it.

George is the man, he kept going and going. I started off pretty strong but took a break in the middle to take a picture. Then after every turn, the road kept folding on top itself, I took a five second breather. I kept up with George because I have a higher average MPH climbing speed, but I burn out quicker :) It took a solid hour for me to finish the climb. We all made it and we were pretty happy up there on top of the islands. We stayed there until it got too cold. The descent was amazingly cold. We hit our top speeds and missed our turn out to our camp.